Paraphrasing a question from an evaluation session: "Flying the CH-47 after the AH-64, yaw response feels completely different and collective changes don’t need pedal at all. Is the Chinook model unfinished?"
Working as intended — and honestly, this question is the flight model earning its keep. The CH-47’s two rotors counter-rotate, so their reaction torques cancel continuously: there is no residual torque to trim and no tail rotor to trim it with. The pedals instead tilt the two discs laterally in opposite directions, and that couple yaws the aircraft. Pitch likewise comes primarily from differential collective between the front and aft heads rather than from tilting a single disc.
The habit you noticed missing — feeding pedal with collective — is a single-rotor habit. On the Apache, more collective means more reaction torque means more tail rotor thrust required. On the tandem, both torques rise together and keep cancelling, so the coupling does not exist. The simulator branches into a separate physics family for the tandem rather than parameterising the conventional model, precisely so these differences are real rather than cosmetic.
There is a longer write-up on the blog ("A Tandem Rotor Is Not Two Helicopters") including why this matters on the maintenance side — the sync shaft that keeps the two rotors phased is flight-critical in a way nothing on a single-rotor aircraft is.
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